After Turisas it was time for the headliner of the evening in the guise of British DragonForce. Last time I saw them was on the The Black Crusade with, among others, Machine Head. At that time they impressed me with their lively performance, so I was looking forward to another kick ass show from their part.

The first thing to hit me was the ring with a built in blue light guitarist Herman Li was wearing. My God, there’s a 14 year old girl hidden inside him I thought, however after only a short while I realized it was just an effect gadget for his guitar. An honest mistake on my part.
As I had anticipated DragonForce was a lively band as ever; Sam Totman (guitar) quickly marked himself as the most energetic of the bunch though with his high jumps, quick sprints and lousy (but fun) humour. His only true rival was Vadim Pruzhanov (keyboards). As soon as this guy got his keytar on he went absolutely insane!
As I mentioned earlier, the band was up to all its usual goofy behaviour where our two guitarists displayed possibly every weird way available in equipment handling as they played the normal grips, inverted grips, tongue tapping and just normal ‘throwing your instrument around’; Pruzhanov at several times playing with his chin and the rest of the band kept pace with their own unique qualities.
Pruzhanov was also joined in his solo part by Netta Skog (Turisas) who came in and laid down some accordion solo and also playing around a bit with the keyboardist’s theremin. The solo ended with an entertaining and well-played keytar/accordion (what the hell kind of metal gig is this?!) battle where they took turns in showing of their amazing skills.
Other skills of the band were displayed in a long guitar solo where ZP Theart (vocals) and Frédéric Leclercq (bass) went to get a generous zip of Jack Daniels.

I’m afraid I’m not sure I can provide an accurate setlist for this concert as I’m not well-rehearsed enough in recognising DragonForce track titles, and the setlist visible on stage seemed much, much shorter than the actual set being played. Maybe I’m just being fooled here by the long songs DragonForce make, I don’t know. I can however tell you that the set ended with their possibly most famous song (featured in the Guitar Hero III game) Through The Fire And Flames (from Inhuman Rampage). And this was not on the setlist.
This was actually presented in a way which made it sound they weren’t extremely interested in playing this track yet again;” You don’t want to hear a fucking Guitar Hero song do you?” As the song was still greeted with the loudest cheers of the evening from the large audience, DragonForce had no choice but to play it; although I sincerely doubt they truly did mind.

I don’t think DragonForce’s music will ever really catch my ear, to me the songs are simply to similar to one another. However, as a live act there are few or possibly none who can rival them! This is truly the only right way to experience DragonForce.

Setlist (as written):

Heroes Of Our Time
Operation Ground And Pound
Reasons To Live
Fury Of The Storm
The Warrior Inside
Solo (Pruzhanov/Skog)
Revolution Deathsquad
Soldiers Of The Wasteland
The Last Journey Home